Taking Flight -- Part Three

Well, this is it, guys. Part Three of TAKING FLIGHT. My brain is a little fried at the moment, so I'm not sure what to really post in the author's note at the beginning here other than the usual tedium: Enjoy. Don't copy without my permission. Don't let moon-eyed Goth musicians with a voice like Christian Bale's escape your French-manicured claws. Oh, and this is the final piece of Cayde and Abram's story.
You know, that old chestnut.
XO,
LA

Taking Flight -- Part Three

The doctors said I lost my son sometime between my face plant into concrete and the ride to the hospital. He had twisted around my umbilical cord and choked himself to death, on top of something inside me bursting and drowning him in fluid and blood. It’s unlikely I’ll ever have kids again, but after that pain and all that blood, I think I’d be crazy to want to.

That other thought lingers just along the peripheral edge of my conscience, and so far I’ve been ignoring it, not letting the thought pass. But I’ll let it pass now because there’s nothing like finally being able to have a pity party and let your brain torture you:  I’ll never have kids again because if they aren’t Abram’s, what’s the point?

I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous. Like Twilight and its sequels ridiculous. Like ‘Without my leather and studded boot-wearing, almost as pale as the undead boyfriend, I have no reason to exist’ stupid. Hey, I scoffed at Bella too. No girl needs another person to complete her and she can be happy and live her life all by her big-girl panties wearing self.

But now Abram’s gone, his baby’s gone and right now I’m pretty sure I want to overdose on something like those pills my mom takes, as dramatic and as pathetic as it sounds.

Which doesn’t make sense. Because how could I care so fucking much about someone I barely know? How could my life, my thoughts, and the reasons behind my decisions, revolve around someone who isn’t me? I know that sounds selfish, but c’mon. I’m twenty-one. What in the flying fuck is a twenty-one year old supposed to know about raising a child or love or true responsibility when your life revolves around just graduating college and (hopefully) getting a job when you’re out? I don’t know and I don’t claim to know shit.

But what I do know – and this is what frightens me most and what’s taken me the longest time to admit – is that without Abram, I’m not happy. I’m not me. I’m this ghost of what used to be me. I am someone altered, someone without her cynical naivety or her innocence or any fucking sense of direction. Before, I never second guessed my actions or shut my damn mouth. Now, I hold my tongue and think first, because what do I know about anyone or their situation? I even filter my thoughts for snarkiness and being insensitive. I had admired Abram for that, and like a mirror, I tried to replicate and reflect. I lost friends because of it, but I’ve come to understand that they were all pretty shitty friends to begin with anyway. I am almost completely different from the person who I used to be. And now I have this phantom limb thing going on, a part of me missing that aches, that doesn’t seem to get the fucking hint to pack up its baggage and just leave…and now I’m starting to realize I’m never going to get the old me back. I’m never going to get what I had with Abram back. And now, without the baby? I am absolutely not the same person at all.

“Cayde?”

The gentle clear voice clears my head and I let one eye open, letting in a foggy, blurry mess of shapes and figures that take almost a full minute to sharpen.

“Cayde, you have some visitors.” I open my other eye now and blink twice. Finally after another minute, I manage to the find the source of the calm voice – Nurse Jean. She is my pretty brunette nurse with big fake tits and perfectly curled hair who liked to wheel people up and down hallways flashing her big smile and basically seemed to not have enough to do.

It takes me a second to realize that Jean is waiting for to respond to this not-question. “They can pass,” I tell her, ignoring the giggle that escapes her mouth.

She opens the door wider and I swallow dry spit as my mom and dad enter. My sister is lingering back behind them, her future-fiancé hovering over her shoulder behind her. All four of them look so uncomfortable that for a second I feel like I should apologize or something.

Dad spoke first. “How are you feeling?”

I blink. Filter and breathe. Filter and breathe.

Filter: I want to overdose on Percocet, so hand me mom’s purse? I breathe in deep. “Great,” I reply, my voice flat.

Dad’s eyes narrow, but he walks into the room – the first besides Nurse Jean to do so – and sits at my bedside. Mom, barely capable of genuine emotion, just follows along dutifully after him and stands awkwardly at his shoulder, her smile stiff.

“I’ll just be right outside if you need anything,” Nurse Jean says, her wide smile and glittering eyes telling me how much she enjoys this family drama we’re having and that she’ll be listening right outside the closed door.

Big Sis Alice slowly sits in the chair at my right side, a nervous Jeff Bing smiling awkwardly over at me, trying to be comforting. The thing is, I can believe in Jeff’s comfort – he’s the only genuinely warm person in the so-called “family circle” that I have. Despite that though, he’ll take Alice’s side any day. After the dinner where I dumped spaghetti on her freshly curled hair and designer clothes and attempted to rip her face off with my nails afterwards, I’d be stupid to expect anything less.

“What about the baby?” Alice asks haltingly, her face suspiciously pale for someone so devoted to Planet Tan.

I close my eyes and try to not be snarky or mean or cynical or start bawling like I want to.

“He’s gone,” I whisper.

Silence.

For a full minute, I wait for someone to saying anything or to hear a choked sob – but I get absolutely nothing.

When I open my eyes, I first see mom. She’s relieved.

My eyes swing to dad, the man whose face in the past six months has become more lined and older looking, and see nothing – his lawyer face is on and it’s not going anywhere.

Jeff is looking at his stubby white fingers and the perfectly trimmed nails over them, his OCD and awkwardness going to work.

It’s Alice who puts her hand on mine and gently pats. When I look at her, I can’t help but feel shocked because she’s fucking crying.

“Alice?” Jeff asks, thrown off from cleaning his nails by her shaking shoulders.

Alice is suddenly invading my space two seconds later, her dark hair in my mouth and her arms squeezing me tighter than what is considered normal than our usual frosty hugs.

“I-I’m so sorry, Cayde,” Alice pants, her arms tightening even more. “That’s so awful!”

“Awful doesn’t even begin to cover it,” I hear my mouth say before I could filter it.

Alice shakes her head, slapping more of her hair onto my face. “I know!” she sobs. When Alice pulls away, I’m surprised to see that for once she’s uglier than me. “How can you be so calm right now?” she chokes out. Jeff is handing her a tissue before she even dares using her sleeve to wipe her nose. “I mean, if I lost my baby, I’d be…inconsolable!”

I gestured to the bags filled with clear fluid and labeled with what just looked like a clump of syllables thrown together around me. “I’m so hyped on drugs right now that the whole world could become annihilated by the Japanese and I couldn’t give a flying fuck.”

Damn, I think my filter is broken.

“Cayde!” Mom and Dad admonish in unison. I ignore them.

“But you must feel something?!” Alice presses.

I give her a look. Where the hell was she going with this? “Well, yea,” I snort. You freaking bitch, what do you want me to say? That I want to punch something? Scream until my throat bleeds? Kick and cry and throw a fit until this angry black monster in my chest finally is satisfied? That I hate myself? That I prayed to God to be wrong? That I would give him something – anything – if he’d just bring my son back? That I want to die?

These are not things you tell your family. I know this, my somewhat operational filter knows this, and so I say, “I just lost the one thing in my life that means something to me, that I’d die for in a heartbeat. I feel angry. I feel like it was my fault. I feel like I could’ve done something – anything – different and he’d still be right here. But he isn’t, Alice, and I don’t know if it’s fully set in yet.” And when it does, I would fucking advise you to get the hell away from me, I want to add, but I don’t.

“Well, we’ll be here for you no matter what,” Jeff pipes up, looking geeky and adorable with his tears in his eyes and his ruby red BAZINGA shirt damp from where he blotted his tears.

The four of them nod in the affirmative, but I could care less if they meant it or not. Right now, none of them or what they think matters.

“Perhaps in time, you’ll see this as a good thing. A new beginning.”

I look over at my mother and wish in that moment that her meds would just react violently on some chemical level and make her drop the fuck dead.

“Of course you’d feel that way,” I told her. Fuck you was implied.

Dad intervened immediately and squeezed my free hand, the first physical contact from the parent who had actually raised me. “All that matters now is that you heal,” dad said firmly. His hazel eyes were suspiciously wet, but I tried not to take any notice of that. Dad just doesn’t cry. He doesn’t – he can’t – he mustn’t. It was one thing we had in common. Or did have in common until I got p—.

Nope. Not going there. Not yet. Land of Denial, here I come.

“Can we get you anything?” Jeff asked, practically twitching in place he was so desperate to be helpful.

“Um, I could really use some water?” I said.

Jeff’s face lit up in a heartbeat. “I’ll go grab a nurse!” he replied, taking off out of the room with that awkward-yet-adorable geeky wave of his. TAKE ME WITH YOU! my inner bitch screamed.

“Is the doctor going to come in sometime soon?” my mother asked as soon as the door was shut.

I shot her a look. “Why? So you can ask for a refill?”

“CAYDE!” said three outraged voices at once.

What? It’s true.

“No,” she all but hissed, her light blue eyes turning into slivers of ice as she regarded me. “So we can have an update on your condition.”

I clutched the blankets between my fingers, trying so hard to fight the impulse to wrap them around her scrawny neck. Yea, that’s what my mother does to me.

Impulsive.

Selfish.

Stupid.

Disgraceful.

Whore.

It’s a marvel how my mother can break me down into the most depressing array of adjectives when she was on a roll. How she managed to get out of her ‘Where in the World is Camilla Pruett?’ mindset long enough to rip me a new asshole about my obvious penchant for bad choices (like I hide them? WTF.) I will never know, maybe her system finally became immune to Percocet, Vicodin, and every other pill she chugs down with her dirty martini every morning.

These are things I hear in my head every time I look or think about my mother. The awful things she has said, the lack of warmth meant in her defense to spark my independence, how my father raised three girls – one of whom was actually his wife, and how I never stopped trying to convince my mother I was worth her time. 

It’s hard to say I’m not bitter about it – I am – but I think I’ve finally reached the point where letting all that shit go, even though I shouldn’t have to, is easier than rehashing it over and over again.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to roll over and just take her abuse.

“Don’t worry, mother,” I hear myself say. “I’m no longer pregnant. The big bad man who knocked me up isn’t going to come back and do it again. In a few hours, I’ll be discharged and in a few days I’ll be back at school with My Life Plan back on track. Anything else?”

Inner Bitch has struck again.

Dad sits back slowly in his chair and lets out a kill-me-now sigh.

Alice cringes and ducks her head, trying to decide whether or not she wants to smile or frown.

Mom turns purple in the face.

For three heartbeats, I wait for the explosion. It takes a full minute for me to realize that it’s not going to come.

Mom huffs and adjusts her purse strap angrily over her designer sweater-clad shoulder. “I’ll be outside, Robert,” she snaps, spinning on her heel and stomping out of the room. The hospital door slams with a bang behind her.

“Did you really have to say that?” Alice whispers.

Of course I didn’t. But I did anyway.

Alice sighs. “I’ll go talk to her,” she tells dad. I watch her stand up and adjust her sweater, picking at imaginary lint. When she is satisfied whatever speck is gone, she looks up at me. “I’m really sorry about your loss, Cayde, I really am.” She sniffs then, her nose suddenly turning red and then she has her back to me, her strides curt and short and anxious to get away. When the door shuts, I look over at dad.

“What’s that all about?”

“Some people in this family actually care about the other,” dad remarks dryly. “Who knew?”

I snort. “Yea, who knew.”

Dad gives me a dark look. “Cayde, our family has its problems, but you know better than to think we don’t love each other.”

“Well, our family has a funny way of showing affection.”

“Which is why you sought it elsewhere.”

Boom. Dad in lawyer mode. Just fucking grand.

“I did,” I say, my voice suddenly hoarse. I clear it a few times, my eyes definitely not making contact with his.

“Who was he, Cayde?”

I shake my head immediately.

I never told my parents who the father was and I wasn’t going to do it now, not after I had just lost—

Instantly I close my eyes and fight against the white hot pinpricks that stab unanimously at the backs of them, sniffling hard.

“Cayde, I’m not trying to make you upset.”

No? Really? “Dad, I just lost my son. I’m not going to fucking feel like the world is full of rainbows and sunshine.”

“Now you understand how your mother feels.”

I open my eyes and blink away the fog of tears that clouded them. Dad looks serious – heartbroken even. 

What the fuck?

Instead of just keeping my mouth shut and ignoring the bait Lawyer-Dad threw my way, I ask exactly what he wants me to ask. "What happened?"

Dad gives me a joyless smile. “Your mother had three miscarriages before she had your sister. When we found out she was pregnant with you, she was so excited most of the time that she wouldn’t sleep.”

I try not to snort at that, but a weird noise comes out of my nose anyway. “So what happened?” Filter: So why is she a cold, heartless bitch with the maturity level equal to someone like mine?

Dad frowns but tries otherwise to ignore my derisiveness. “Dementia.”

What.

The.

Fuck.

Dad took my rare silence as his cue to keep talking. “Cayde, those pills she takes are to keep her from one day wandering out of the house and never seeing her again. They make her hard to be around, I admit, but at least these pills won’t turn her into a mumbling vegetable.”

I know my mouth opened and closed a few times, but no words came out for a full five minutes.

“My mother is crazy?” I whisper. It's cruel to ask, but it's all I can think of right now.

Dad suddenly smiles, happily this time. “Your mother has always been crazy. Impulsive, gave the world and all its rules two middle fingers way up, spoke whatever came to her mind no matter who she was talking to, brutally honest almost to a fault…any of that sound familiar?”

I look away. No, it’s not familiar. I’m not my mother – I can’t be. She’s a fucking ice queen, for fuck’s sake.

“Once the illness set in, it changed her a lot, but the medicine made it worse – the dementia manageable, but the side effects…well. You know all of those.”

I shake my head slowly. This is too much – all of it. First the baby, now mom…

“Why are you just now telling me this? And don’t say it’s to protect me, that’s bullshit.”

Dad sighs. “I…I don’t know really, Cayde. Yes, to me it was to protect you and your sister. To your mom it was something more than that.”

“She wanted to save face,” I mutter.

“Something like that,” he said slowly, his voice hinting at lawyer-mode again. “She also didn’t want you girls to treat her any differently, like she was delicate or needed special handling.”

Oh, no worry about that, dad, I thought. You can’t delicately handle a fucking iceberg.

Dad leans forward in the chair, the leather creaking beneath his weight. “Just promise me that you’ll try to patch things up with your mother, Cayde. She deserves that much of your love at least.”

I feel my hands automatically flex into fists at the idea of a draw with that evil woman, but…what could I do?

Let it go.

That’s the best thing to do, I know, but…damn it’ll be hard.

“I’ll try,” I say finally, earning one of dad’s rare bright smiles that shows all of his chops. But don’t fucking expect me to start shopping with her and shit.

Filter and breathe, Cayde.

Filter and breathe.

Suddenly, a quick repetitious knock interrupts whatever dad is about to say. “Cayde? Mr. Pruett?”

Nurse Jean again? What the fuck?

“Come in,” my dad says, the back of his hand finding both of his eyes and quickly rubbing them.

Huh. So he had been crying for real then.

Weird.

Slowly the door opens and I swallow hard at the sight of peppy Nurse Jean and a huge fan of bright flowers above her bright smile and perfect curls.

It’s not him, is it? It can’t be, right?

The flower fan moves and something in my chest sinks a little. I try to smile at Gabriel anyway, but it feels so forced that I make it brief.

“Hey Gabriel,” I say, but Gabriel isn’t looking at me.

His eyes are on dad and vice versa. I watch the showdown until Gabriel cuts his eyes back at me. His smile doesn’t look so peppy now.

“Hey, best fraannn.”

Nurse Jean lets Gabriel pass – though not without a quick once over – and shuts the door partially behind him. Dad stands and he and Gabriel briefly shake hands, dad staring him down the entire time.

“Gabriel,” my dad remarks, quiet and sober.

“Mr. Pruett,” says Gabriel, his voice thin.

I know the pissing contest is happening and I should say something to get Gabriel off the hook, but the truth is, I like watching him squirm. Gabriel is terrified of my dad, almost to a molecular level. Mentioning my dad’s name gets him practically anxiety-prone, and for the life of me I can’t understand why. But fuck it, because it’s as funny as hell to watch in action.

“Pretty flowers,” I comment, drawing the two out of their awkward match. “For me?”

Gabriel’s green eyes soften and he lowers them to the stand beside my bed. “No, they’re for the room,” he says sweetly, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face.

I open my mouth to say the two words that would be the perfect response to such assholery, but shut it when my filter comes back into play. I settle for “Jerkface.”

“I’ll be right outside, sweetheart,” dad interjects. He even goes as far to kiss my forehead and smooth back my hair, like I’m three years old again and he’s tucking me into my Pocahontas bed.

“Great,” I tell him – and I kinda mean it.

Gabriel waits until dad has left the room and his footsteps have completely receded before he lets out a heavy sigh. “Whenever I see your dad, I almost feel like I should fess up for every sin I’ve ever committed.”

“That would be boring,” I remark. “Dad doesn’t care if you covet your Batman collection.”

Gabriel shoots me a flat look. “I’m talking about the sins that actually matter.”

Instantly, I make my eyes wide and throw my hands up to my face. “You’ve killed someone!” I screech, gasping and fanning my cheeks.

Gabriel blinks. “Uh, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if I had.” He then regards me curiously, his eyes searching over my face. “You okay?”

I smile, much too wide. “Yes. I’m okay. Why? Are you okay? Do I not look okay? Because I’m okay, I promise, I’m just you know, dying on the inside and wishing that I had never ever walked into The Offering seven months ago or went back to his hotel room or let him stay at my apartment for weeks straight where he got me pregnant and now I’m just a knocked up, fucked up teenager with no friends and a crazy family of alcoholics and narcissists as my support system.”

I watch Gabriel’s entire face crumple before my tears blur him away.

“I lost my baby,” I tell him, the air suddenly not getting into my lungs. “I lost the only thing that’s kept me sane. I-I don’t know what to do, Gabe. I think…I think…” With every breath my chest grows tighter and tighter and somewhere to my left a sensor thingy is beeping like crazy until finally, my head turns light and fuzzy.

“Cayde, you need to breathe, baby,” I hear Gabriel saying, but he sounds far away.

When my vision starts bubbling with black spots, I hear the beeping sound flatten and the world suddenly goes white.

~*~*~*~

When Abram first walked into Texas Presbyterian, he had no clue what he was going to say. Everything about this situation was out of his comfort zone. His hatred for hospitals was a well-harbored secret, starting with his mother’s stint in rehab and the multiple visits to the ER to get his ex – Sonya’s – stomach pumped when she had OD-ed. But none of those visits could compare to this one, not even close.

So comfort zone? Nonexistent. He was not on the best footing here.

Finding Cayde was easy – a few wary nurses had pointed him the right way and as soon as he stepped off the elevator and onto her floor, he heard shouting. Nurses and a tall doctor wearing a white lab coat and cowboy boots rushed like bats out of hell into the very room he sought, shouting at each other and shuffling around like madmen.

When he approached the room and saw a male, blonde and Thor-like, being pushed out into the hall, screaming, “CAYDE! NOOOOO!” at the top of his lungs, something in him just…

Cracked.

One second, he was watching Thor’s Twin being shoved into the opposite wall by a couple of buff nurses in green scrubs, the next he was standing in the doorway, watching a thrashing, purple-faced girl of the fey fight against the swarm of people in white around her. The doctor with the cowboy boots was measuring something into a needle, his back turned to the chaos. Nobody noticed him standing there, nobody but Cayde.

The moment her hazel eyes connected to his, recognition lit them up like a dark sky suddenly assaulted by Fourth of July fireworks. One bony hand released her red throat to grab at the air and a plead, silent but mouthed, formed on her lips. "Please," she said. "Abram, please."

In that moment, the doctor turned and the nurses took note of her distraction. Suddenly, Cayde vanished from sight as the cloud of white and green descended upon her. Cayde's thrust out arm, the one that had been shakily reaching for him, was pinned down hard to the hospital bed. The doctor stood over her, passive but determined, his aim true as the sharp needle tip dipped into the tiny blue vein at the crook of her elbow and slowly pressed his thumb down.

Cayde screamed.

Instantly, all the fog faded and Abram was prompted into action.

He saw some nurses approach him, but a dull throb in his left arm and the subsequent crash of their bodies meeting chairs and medical equipment told him they were taken care of. More nurses came, but they vanished just as quickly, and his body as though possessed never stopped moving forward, his eyes never leaving Cayde’s now-prone, pale form.

The doctor was reaching for him but by then, it was too late.

Abram pulled Cayde into his arms, feeling the crack in him sever a little more.

But he would not break. Not now, not here. Not when Cayde needed to come back. She had to come back. God be damned if he was going to live this life knowing that she wasn’t in it. Fuck that. She had to come back.

She had to.

“Come back to me, babe,” he whispered against her ear. He heard the word “cops” thrown around, but the fuzz didn’t matter at this point. Nothing did.

“Come back to me, Cayde,” Abram tried again, his arms tightening around her when he felt hands touch his shoulders, his back, his wrists. “Talk to me, love. Please." Abram wasn't above begging. Not anymore.

But there was nothing.

No.

No.

A commanding voice, authorative but gentle suddenly commanded, “Son, let her go. You have to let her go.”

“I can’t,” he told them, all of them. Himself. He didn't know how to let her go - if he had been capable, he wouldn't be here right now.

Suddenly, the crack grew and Abram felt that thing inside him, inside that cage, tremble and shake. He quickly turned his face into the thick, wild strands of Cayde’s pale blonde hair, his throat tight and his shame, his anger, his pain, his everything came pouring out of him in salty rivers, wetting his skin and dampening that beautiful cloud of her hair before pattering on her forehead.

“You can’t go, Cayde.” Just say it you insolent prick, something in him scolded. Just say it!

“I-I love you.”

God it was like a release – a weight lifted free.

So he kept saying it. Over and over and over again, even as hands pulled at him, as machines beeped and whirred and even as lips pressed against his neck, his scruffy chin and jaw—

Wait – lips?

“Where else would I possibly go, you big dummy?”

Abram felt the tile greet his knees hard enough to jar his body, but none of that mattered when the woman in his arms began to move.

Abram pulled away, just enough to see Cayde’s hazel eyes, wide open and sparkling with tears, her pale lips curved in a weak smile.

“Oh, and Abram?”

Abram swallowed thickly, his tongue suddenly too big for his mouth. “Yes, Cayde?” he finally managed to whisper.

Cayde slowly rose on her knees and placed her lips over his.

In that moment, everything that Abram had kept caged inside, every ounce of pain, hurt, remorse, guilt, and love, broke free. It consumed their kiss, quickly morphing it into something borne of desperation, of need, of love that Abram was sure he lost. His head started spinning, his lungs burned, but what the fuck did he need air for? As long as Cayde was here, right here and alive and breathing and smiling and kissing him just like this, he couldn’t give a damn about air.

Cayde suddenly tilted her head back, gasping shakily against his lips. Abram opened his eyes and met her teary ones.

“I love you too,” Cayde said quietly, her cheeks suddenly swashed in pink.

And for that, Abram kissed her until she was giggling breathlessly and he was sure every inch of her face, neck, and hands had met his lips touch. When his lips brushed over hers again, a throat cleared behind them.

“Maybe we should let the lady catch her breath, considering for about a minute or two there, she didn't have one to catch.”

Cayde let out a soft groan as her forehead connected with his chest.

“That’s not pathetic or anything,” she muttered darkly.

Abram wrapped his arms around her and gently squeezed, his lips coming down to press against the crown of her head. “What matters is that you came back,” he told her.

Cayde nuzzled his chest before lifting her head up to look at him. Stark seriousness lined her face and eyes, no trace of humor anywhere. A soft hand rested against his cheek, tracing over the bone and skin there like it was precious, almost revered.

“What matters, Abram, is that I came back to you.”

Abram did not miss the subtle double entendre, he couldn’t.

This time when he kissed her, it was slow and sweet and it didn’t end until he had her safely back on the hospital bed, her gown placed as best as he could over the body that for seven months he hadn’t been able to get out of his head.

“We’re going to check your vitals now, just to make sure everything’s still ticking,” the doctor said, a funny look on his face as he regarded the two of them.

“Make it quick,” Cayde told him, her eyes not leaving Abram’s. “I have some catching up to do.”

Cayde had never caught up with him though. After the checkup, she had passed out in exhaustion, leaving Abram to explain what in the fuck he had to do with this whole mess and with a few apologies to make. After introducing himself to the Pruett family and the computer-savvy Jeff Bing, he made a point to tell Thor’s Twin – Gabriel Bradshaw – as subtly as he could that Gabriel was permanently in the friend zone. Threatening to hunt him down like a dog if he so much as touched Cayde beyond what was deemed friendly really hammered the point home.

Which brings him to here, sitting alone at Cayde’s bedside, waiting for the moment she would wake up.

He knew his apology was nothing without a promise, a promise to make up for how shitty he had been to just abandon her like that, to never be that weak again. Never again would he do something so fucking ridiculous, so selfish. He had been a fool to think that he could live without her. An absolute fucking fool.

“So I didn’t dream you up. You’re really here.”

Abram started at the croaking voice and instantly reached over for the ice chips. Cayde took one and smiled gratefully.

“No,” Abram murmured. “Not a dream.”

Cayde nodded slowly, but he saw the tears coming despite her stonewall expression.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “For everything. For those awful things I said, for not trying to work things out, for just giving up like that and not trying to talk shit out and I really wasn’t trying to trap you with a baby. I tried the abortion thing, I really did, but I just couldn’t. The idea of giving a part of you up – even this small part of you – I just couldn’t do it. I’m too selfish, I know that, because I couldn’t let you go and I don’t know if I can let him go, Abram, I just…can’t. I –”

Abram shushed her with a soft kiss.

“I’m sorry,” she said against his lips, again.

Abram opened his eyes and looked at her, really looked at her.

She looked unhealthy, haggard, pale, and so, so sad. If it weren’t for the glow in her eyes, Abram would’ve sworn the life had gone out of her.

But despite that, she was still beautiful. She was still the girl he loved. A little more earthly, maybe, a little less cocky for sure, but she still made his heart race and his body react like he knew no one else on this planet could.

And when he kissed her, he knew she felt the same way.

That meant there was hope.

Hope that they could heal.

Hope that they could grow, together and strong, and as a team.

Hope he could take and with hope, he began his apology.

“All my life, music has meant everything to me. I lived and breathed the notes, the chords, the instruments, and I practiced for hours every day, happy in the knowledge that as long as I could hear the music, I would live to see another sunrise.

“Then I met you, Cayde, and suddenly, the music became clearer. I created melodies and wrote the best lyrics of my life – everything came together seamlessly, almost too easily. I went to bed each night with you knowing that if there was a perfect life, I was living it.”

“But?” Cayde whispered, catching on quickly.

Abram felt his lips twitch into a smile at that. “But, it all stopped when you ended that Skype call. I stopped hearing the music. I stopped creating. I stopped living. But the one thing I missed most wasn’t what I thought it would be – the music I can live without. I could have lived the rest of my life without it, honestly. It would’ve been hard, sure, but not unbearable. Not so fucking traumatic that I couldn’t wake up every morning, put on my shoes and live my life. No,” he took a deep breath, “living without you, not seeing you, not hearing your laugh, not knowing what you were doing and if you were okay…that I couldn’t live without. I’m absolutely nothing without you, Cayde Pruett, and I’m so fucking sorry it took me this long to tell you that.”

Abram took her small hands gently into both of his and squeezed. “Please forgive me?”

Cayde let her tears fall, one thick drop at a time down her red cheeks, her smile growing wider with every second.

“Okay,” she said, quietly and with a soft laugh. “I forgive you.”

Abram felt his cheeks pull apart as he gave her a smile to match hers. “And I forgive you.”

“Good,” Cayde sighed shakily, sniffling some. “Because if you hadn’t, that would’ve called for some really extreme measures on my part.”

Cayde then flinched at the insinuation, obviously realizing it was tactless, but Abram rested his hand on her belly, empty now of everything except for what, honestly, should really be there to assure her.

“I'm sure you would've convinced me," Abram said with a slight smile. "You always did have a way with words."

Cayde flushed from the crown of her hair to her oddly-colored green painted toes, her eyes suddenly unable to meet his.

Abram felt his lips form a smile. Some part of him wanted to chuckle in glee at how even now, after all of this shit he had put her through, he could still make her blush. Hope, that damned sentiment, crept back into his bones again, and instead of running from it - or ruing it's existence as he had done before - he embraced it. He embraced what it meant.

Abram started to stand when Cayde’s hand suddenly shot out and gripped his. He lifted his eyes to hers in surprise.

“Stay?” she whispered.

Abram scooted the chair closer to her bedside and took her hand back in his. “There’s no other place I’d rather be,” he promised.

Cayde smiled softly, the tension in her face and body easing as he settled back down beside her. Abram never let go of her hand as he stroked over the sharp lines of her face, his touch slowly lulling her eyes to close.

Only when Abram was sure she was fast asleep did he pull his hands away from her and reach into his coat pocket, as he had tried to do before she had asked him to stay.

His fingers wrapped around the small treasure and brought it out into the early morning light. Abram's thumb on its own accord flipped the lid open, revealing the jewelry inside. Abram stared at it for a long moment, his heart pounding in his chest as he slid a rough thumb over the glinting diamonds and the silver band.

The ring had been one of the many gifts he had bought for Cayde on tour. He had done it in secret, finding a small jewelry shop in London with a penchant for rings that suited more of his and Cayde's tastes, and once he saw it in the shop window, he hadn't hesitated to go inside and purchase the damned thing, knowing exactly who it belonged to.

With a slight sigh, Abram shut the box with the softest snap.

Soon, he vowed to Cayde's sleeping face. After the pain is gone, after we've figured all of this shit out, after you no longer look at me and think of the time when I had left you, abandoned you and our family out of fear.

"Soon," he said aloud. When we've finally broken free.

~*~*~*~